


Decorations

by Laramie



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 08:57:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7678114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laramie/pseuds/Laramie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy decorates Thomas. Like a little Christmas tree /CP-reference</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decorations

**Author's Note:**

> Best enjoyed on a sunny day with a glass of cool lemonade.

Jimmy Kent was a fidgeter; always had been. His mother had found it hilarious that he could never sit still for dinner without tapping his feet or twining a piece of string endlessly around his fingers. His father had mostly given him a stern glare if he became too distracting. Jimmy had managed to curb the impulse a _little_ since becoming a servant, but he still indulged his need for movement where he could.

The upshot of it was, Jimmy had stolen a scrap of unusually silky-feeling ribbon along with a stuffed handful of other oddments and offcuts from Anna's sewing bag. She had left it unattended in the servants' hall, so really, it was her own fault if Jimmy took something.

He wasn't quite sure why he had filched the scraps, but he had done, and he had hurried out into the sunny afternoon with his bulging hand half-hidden behind him, lest he pass anyone on his way out the door. There was a short strip of lawn between the side of the house and the kitchen garden wall that was unobserved and largely undisturbed; Jimmy often used it when he had a quiet moment to himself to sit and smoke.

However, as he rounded the corner, he spotted someone sitting cross-legged in the sunshine. They were leaning against the wall on the kitchen garden side, the house wall being a shelter to a narrow border of flowers. Thomas. Jimmy should have known better than to think there was any corner of Downton that Thomas did not know inside-out.

Jimmy's first instinct was to slink away and keep his loot a secret, but Thomas was probably aware of his presence by now, even though he had not looked up from the letter-paper on his knee. Turning tail now would be at best suspicious, and at worst hurtful.

Jimmy stuffed his fist in his trouser pocket. The ribbons weren't quite concealed, but he hoped they were inconspicuous enough for Thomas not to ask. "Afternoon, Mr Barrow."

Looking up, Thomas favoured Jimmy with a smile. For a moment, he looked so striking that Jimmy could scarcely remember the difference between a commoner and a gentleman; what it was that meant Lord Grantham penned his correspondence at a desk in a sunny library while Thomas sat out here on grass he didn't own. "Hello," Thomas said simply. The sun was behind Jimmy, forcing Thomas to squint through his smile.

"What are you doing?" Embarrassment stole over Jimmy at once. Wasn't it _obvious_ what Thomas was doing? _Now he'll think you're a simpleton_ , he scolded himself. That mattered to him. He wasn't always interested in other people's opinions - they were generally so uninteresting, after all - but for some reason, Thomas's opinion was different.

But Thomas gave no sign that he was disappointed in Jimmy's opening question, and simply answered it: "Writing a letter. Thought I'd take advantage of the weather. I'll walk into the village to post it later, maybe get a drink."

"Maybe you'll get a tan," Jimmy suggested, fighting to remain straight-faced. Somehow he doubted that very much.

Thomas gave him a _look_ , so akin to Jimmy's father's _you stop that right now_ look that Jimmy grinned and went to sit beside his friend.

"I don't really get tanned," Thomas said, once Jimmy had parked his bum and was less-than-subtly trying to read Thomas's letter on his knee. Jimmy wasn't sure he had ever seen Thomas cross-legged before. Thomas didn't bother to conceal the letter, continuing: "If I do catch any sun, I just burn."

"Not like me." Jimmy stuck his right arm out across Thomas's lap in demonstration, effectively blocking Thomas's access to his letter. "Could tan in the shine off a sixpence."

Thomas laughed, his black hair almost white in the sun.

"My dad used to say that," Jimmy grinned, pleased at the reaction. " _You tan in the shine off a sixpence, Jim._ That's what he used to call me, sometimes, anyway." As he spoke, he was watching Thomas screwing the lid back onto his fountain pen and laying it down beside himself.

"Take a bit more than that for me," Thomas said.

There was a stray daisy in the grass in front of Jimmy. Jimmy picked it and put it on Thomas's head. Thomas let the flower lay there, so Jimmy said: "I don't think you've much danger of burning today, though. Carson'll be dragging us in soon to shine silver or somethin'."

"Not me," Thomas said. "It's my half-day."

Jimmy felt rather disappointed to learn this. He felt he should already have _known_. "Lucky you," he said, a bit dully. "Off in weather like this."

"Not bad, eh?" Thomas closed his eyes and tipped his face up into the sun. The daisy fell off the back of his head.

"I stole something," Jimmy said suddenly. He probably shouldn't admit that to the under-butler.

Thomas looked at him with one eyebrow raised. "Oh yeah?" He sounded more intrigued than disapproving. "What?"

 _Now why did I tell him that?_ Now he would have to show his fistful of girly ribbons. It was hardly pirate's plunder. Still, he pulled his left hand out of his pocket and opened it to show the creased ribbons spilling over his palm.

Thomas's eyebrows were creased, but his mouth was smiling. "Why'd you steal that?"

Jimmy shrugged and put them on the grass in front of him, stirring through them with a finger. "Anna left them out." One of the ribbons was a grey-blue colour, almost like Thomas's eyes. Jimmy pulled it out with two fingers and held it up to compare; the ribbon was far duller in comparison. Working on instinct, Jimmy pulled out Thomas's arm and slipped the ribbon around his wrist, tying it loosely in a bow.

"So you stole it to make me look daft," Thomas said with amusement, but he left the ribbon where it was.

Jimmy looked through the other scraps of fabric. "Did your parents have any nicknames for you?" he asked, picking up a red ribbon and turning sideways onto his knees to tie it around Thomas's upper arm. Thomas was utterly compliant as he did so; he simply didn't seem bothered in the slightest.

Thomas appeared to think about the question. "Mum called me rascal a lot."

Grinning down at him, Jimmy selected a pink ribbon next and shuffled round in front of Thomas to thread it through the top buttonhole of his unfastened waistcoat. "And your dad?"

"Many and varied," Thomas said quietly.

His carefully controlled tone suddenly reminded Jimmy that Thomas was always extremely reticent on the subject of his father. All Jimmy knew about him was the smallness that would creep into Thomas's posture when he was mentioned. He tugged sharply on the now-tied pink ribbon in Thomas's buttonhole, just to - well, he wasn't sure why. To distract Thomas, he supposed. He looked down at Thomas's angular face, shadowed by Jimmy's own body, and forgot to breathe for a couple of seconds. "Do people ever call you Tom?"

"Not twice," Thomas said darkly, and Jimmy laughed.

As Jimmy turned to pluck up another ribbon, he caught sight of the border out of the corner of his eye, and had a new idea. He stood up and walked the couple of steps over to the flowerbed. He picked a couple of flowers of every type that was there: the dahlias, the marigolds, the tumbling nasturtiums… He had to lean a hand on the wall to reach the blooms at the back.

Thomas did not scold him for picking flowers, though anyone else would have told him off. He just went on explaining to Jimmy's back that he had never liked being called Tom, and Tom Branson had not helped matters. Thommy, he said, was only for children to be called.

When Jimmy turned around again, he had a fleeting impression that Thomas had been studying him. Jimmy had, he realised suddenly, been bending over with his arse in the air half the time. His face felt hot as he returned to kneel in front of Thomas; he hoped it would be attributed to the heat of the day.

Letting the flowers drop beside him in a colourful pile, Jimmy set about winding them one-by-one into Thomas's pomade-heavy hair. Thomas continued to let him get on with it, apparently completely unconcerned by what Jimmy was doing. Jimmy admired him for that. Thomas was so secure in his masculinity that he could sit there covered in bows and with his hair full of flowers and still be utterly, unmistakably, male. Which was why it was so strange that Jimmy could feel himself stirring at the sight. He couldn't kid himself that it was because he was making Thomas look feminine, because he wasn't; he might be adorning his best friend with typically-female decorations, but somehow it only made him more unquestionably a _man._

And there was something breath-taking about the fact that Thomas was putting himself so completely in Jimmy's hands, letting him do whatever he wanted. Jimmy picked up a bright scarlet nasturtium flower and tucked it behind Thomas's ear, tracing the shell of it as he secured the flower's stalk there. Thomas blinked up at him, and still he said nothing.

"You're much more a man than I am," Jimmy murmured, and regretted it at once. Thomas had already witnessed Jimmy's ill-fated attempts to prove his manhood - had unwittingly triggered a year of Jimmy's defensiveness back when Jimmy had been ignorant of the finer details of sexuality. The last thing Jimmy should be doing was confirming Thomas's impression of his insecurities.

"What d'you mean?" Thomas asked. His voice sounded strange.

Jimmy shrugged. "I'd never wear flowers," he mumbled, reaching for a dahlia.

"There's more to being a man than conforming to expectations," Thomas said wisely as Jimmy twisted the flower into his hair.

Jimmy avoided looking at him by turning to pick up another ribbon, an intensely blue one this time. He tied it around Thomas's wrist, a counterpart to the grey-blue one on the other side.

"Ah - that's a bit tight," Thomas said thickly.

"Should I loosen it?" Jimmy asked, looking right into his eyes and looping his fingers around Thomas's wrist. He saw Thomas's throat bob as he swallowed.

"No, it's - fine."

"Right…" It was several seconds before Jimmy managed to let go of Thomas's wrist. He reached for a yellow ribbon. He looked Thomas over and decided his legs were still unacceptably unadorned. With one end of the ribbon in his fingers, Jimmy slipped his hand between Thomas's calf and thigh, pressed against each other as they were with Thomas's legs still crossed. Men had used to wear hose, Jimmy knew, though he wasn't sure how he knew; hose just like women. They had tied at the knee just like this.

Suddenly, Thomas shifted, putting his legs out in front of him, bent at the knee. "Foot's falling asleep," he said, with a nervous laugh.

Jimmy very carefully did not let his gaze stray to Thomas's crotch while he finished securing the yellow ribbon. Either Thomas was aroused or he wasn't, and Jimmy felt so mixed up in that moment that he wasn't sure which was scarier.

Slowly, he met Thomas's eyes again. Thomas's face seemed almost framed by the multitude of flowers tangled in his hair and drooping over his ears. His monochrome livery was dotted with coloured ribbons. Jimmy licked his lips unconsciously. "Looks good," he said quietly.

"I might go to the village in it," Thomas said ponderously, though Jimmy knew he wasn't serious.

"Shall I help you take it off?" he offered, reluctant though he was to unravel the sight before him so soon after creating it.

"Thank you."

Jimmy started with the yellow ribbon at Thomas's knee, and thought about hose again. This was almost like undressing Thomas. Slowly, he worked his way through all the other ribbons, his heart thumping at the sight of the long, dark pink indentations left by the blue ribbon around Thomas's wrist. Jimmy looped each one behind his own neck as they came free, which felt like some kind of victory.

With all the ribbons taken away, Jimmy put them aside and started on the flowers. One by one, he plucked them from out of Thomas's hair, watching the black strands sliding through the blooms. Black against colour. Jimmy's tanned hand against Thomas's dark hair. _I've never been good at knowing what I want_ , Jimmy thought, running his fingers through Thomas's hair even once all the flowers were lying in a bedraggled heap next to them.

"'Snot the same with all the pomade."

"You should try it when it's just been washed."

Jimmy paused with his hand resting on the side of Thomas's head and gazed down at him. "Maybe I will."

Oh, how he wished Thomas had the bravery that he did not! But Thomas had been brave for his sake more than once, and Jimmy had given Thomas so many reasons not to do what Jimmy now wanted him to do so badly. Jimmy was not brave. He was kneeling in front of Thomas with the sun warming his back and probably ruining his trousers and he knew what he wanted to happen next but he was not brave. He didn't know if he could make it happen.

 _Look at his face_ , Jimmy told himself. _See the way he's looking at you right now like you're everything._ There was no risk here, Jimmy told himself firmly. Not of being rejected. Not by Thomas.

He could be brave.

He could do this.

He _wanted_ to do this.

Jimmy nudged Thomas's head back a little further and leaned down and kissed him. He kept the kiss gentle, exploratory. Soft mouths and soft hair and soft touches on Jimmy's waist.

Just as Jimmy was thinking of deepening the kiss, Thomas murmured against his lips: "No, stop."

Jimmy pulled back and stared, terrified.

"Anyone could walk round that corner."

Letting out his breath in a rush, Jimmy closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Thomas's. "Fucking hell, Thomas," he breathed.

"Did I… worry you, just then?"

Jimmy willed his heartrate to slow down. After a moment he tilted his head for another brief kiss, which did nothing to help.

"I did, didn't I?" Thomas pressed, and he was smiling, like he was proud of almost giving Jimmy a heart attack.

Jimmy understood that, though. He knew Thomas was just relieved to realise that he mattered enough to Jimmy to be able to worry him with the fear of being rejected.

"Come and sit here," Thomas urged Jimmy, prodding him in the ribs to encourage Jimmy round to sit beside him. "We can get back to kissing later, in private."

"That a promise?" Jimmy smirked.

Thomas looked at him very seriously and said: "Yes; it is."

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired, weirdly enough, by seeing a drawing of a Tudor man wearing hose on a sunny summer day.


End file.
